Stormy Weather
One of the things that I love the most about our house is that there is so much light. The entire downstairs is window after window and both of the doors are glass, which is only an inconvenience when there’s someone at the door and you want to check to see who it is before answering. When I woke up this morning, I thought that we had lost power again. Everything was dark and grey and silent. I checked the microwave clock, my surefire test, and it told me the correct time. Alright, I said aloud to myself, we have power. What’s the deal?
I looked out of the window to see…nothing. We live on the marsh, so if someone else has an ounce of fog, we have a pound. The entire back patio was nothing but grey, from the deck to the sky. The outside looked like one big bowl of condensed soup that my spoon would stand straight up in without falling. No rain, no visible condensation, just thick puffs of fog at every window and a really weird feeling in my stomach.
After about ten minutes, it began to rain that thick, heavy, tropical storm rain that we get so often here in Savannah and the fog dissapated. Because I overanalyze everything, I started to think about what I have to do today and how it relates to the rain. This afternoon, I have to announce the cast lists for two different shows, which doesn’t sound so harsh in the grand scheme of things – I’m not sending young men off to war or putting young women in prison camps – but for my community its a huge deal that either elates or depresses. You know how in a movie you can always tell that its the worst day of someone’s life because it starts to rain? I just had this vision of some of these kids sitting inside all day because of the rain, waiting for the phone to ring so that I can tell them the good news and then receiving only disappointment. It isn’t because they aren’t good enough. Really, who is ‘good enough’ anyway?
I know that in reality, they are surfing the web (hopefully not reading this), blowing things up on their XBoxes or – dream of dreams – reading a book, but to some kid out there, being in this show is their answer to getting away from home for a few hours a day or making new friends. And I just know that even though every one of them is talented, the kids who get leading roles are going to be taken out for ice cream to celebrate while the kids who are in the ensemble will just get a pat on the back, even though they all ran the same obstacle course and deserve the same double-scoop cone.
I don’t like being the bearer of bad news because, invariably, the people who are disappointed reveal so much more emotion than the people that are excited. The ones who are cast feel like they have to stay professional on the phone, so they keep all of their joyful-joyfuls inside until they hang up, while the sad ones just tear up immediately and start asking me for reasons why they weren’t cast. Kids who get the roles they want never ask ‘why.’
Stormy weather makes me think too much.
It also makes my hair pouffy.
2 Cups of Grits
Sunday night, Vann and I had a delicious dinner consisting of bacon wrapped shrimp and cheese grits. This is one of my all-time favorite – albeit most unhealthy – meals that we can make together. Vann does the shrimp & bacon, I do the stoneground grits. Its amazing. The opportunities that we get to cook alongside each other are few and far between and I treasure them. They make me feel comfortable and give me the delusion that I have a ‘normal life.’
Unless you aren’t paying attention and you accidentally pour in the entire contents of the grits package into the saucepot that already has boiling liquid in it. Then, you feel stupid.
In case you haven’t cooked grits before, you may not be aware of the math that goes into figuring out your portions. It goes something like this: Two Cups = Enough to Feed a Small Country for One Week, Maybe Two.
Holy polenta, Batman! Fortunately for us, they are exceptionally tasty grits. So far we have had them once with dinner, twice with breakfast and made yummy little polenta fries out of them to go with lunch. Tonight’s dinner might be veggies a la grit with chocolate-dipped grits for dessert. I need to buy more floss.
What’s in a Name?
Tonight I asked Vann if he had ever looked up the meanings of all of his names and put them together to see if they made some sort of mad-lib-type sentence. Since he hadn’t, I sat down with my old pal, Google, and got to work. This is what we came up with:
Supplanter of War-Like Beech Trees on a Large Round Fort with a Little Blessed One who is Revered. Twice a day. Times three.
Then I decided to look up my name. BIG MISTAKE.
Enchantress in a Sea of Bitterness.
Seriously, people. I am no longer enchanted with this meaning-of-names business. I was not afloat in a sea of bitterness until I read this statement. I demand a recall.
Things I Learned at Summer Camp
Arts & Crafts class is frequently mispronounced by young children as “Carts & Afts.” Correcting them is an effort in futility.
Carts & Afts safety scissors are actually more dangerous than regular scissors because they encourage kids to try harder to cut themselves. They are amazingly successful.
Carts & Afts class seldom produces art. On rare occasions, however, the kids finish their class projects early and get to make whatever they want. Now I have an abstract pencil holder made of clay, a modernist puppy sculpture made of beads, my name written in Mandarin Chinese (though I highly doubt it) and a portrait of myself mysteriously wearing a cape with a sun on one side and a crescent moon on the other.
On the first day, everyone thinks that 10 sit-ups and push-ups are fantastically unjust. On the last day, they are so proud of themselves for reaching 100 that they hold sit-up competitions to see who is the strongest. If my one accomplishment all summer was to inspire kids to build healthier bodies, then I am satisfied.
Sometimes they hold sit-up competitions after lunch and get sick. This is not my fault.
Some of the kids actually think that I can only count up to eight.
Most boys can touch their toes more easily than most girls. I don’t know why.
Most kids think that Aerosmith is just a new version of Guitar Hero. On the flip side, they now know selections from The Rolling Stones, Kiss and Pat Benetar.
One kid thinks the lyrics to the Beatles song Saw Her Standing There says “I’d rather dance with your mother – ooh!”
Kids that are allergic to nuts and wheat can’t eat jack.
My co-workers can get out of work for any number of fascinating problems. They have managed to get caught in a tornado, have their house struck by lightning, sit on a bee, flush their keys down the toilet and fall into a cactus patch.
A band-aid and a Capri-Sun can heal all wounds.
Kids are like parrots; they stop talking when you turn off the lights.
According to our campers, July 18 was Act Like a Mime Day. This is the best day of the year because the children don’t talk…ON PURPOSE. They also wear striped shirts and berets and pretend to be drowning or trapped in boxes for extended periods of time. Not kidding.
Ages 6-10 get dropped off and picked up at precisely the right time, bring a homemade lunch in a High School Musical lunchbox and have great audiences of parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, siblings, teachers, friends, neighbors and people they met at the park that are amazingly supportive.
Ages 11-18 straggle in about fifteen minutes after call time, buy a frozen entree from the grocery store next door for lunch and are lucky if they get both parents in the same room. The cast is family for a lot of them. This is why we exist.
